Shannon Geis spent months researching the history of Red Hook, reading old newspapers, and, "most importantly, speaking with the people of Red Hook about how they view the community and where they see themselves in it." Her interviews took place shortly after Hurricane Sandy devastated the neighborhood at the end of 2012. Its effects left many of the residents and business owners in the neighborhood to figure out how the storm affected their perceptions of community and personal identity.

She has graciously allowed this site to present two of her interviews with distinct Red Hook WaterStoreis as stand-alone entries; namely those with Rasheed Johnson, a resident of NYCHA’s Red Hook houses and Richard Gambino, a retired professor who grew up in Red Hook in the 1950s.

Ambiguous Borders: Exploring Definitions of Community in Red Hook, Brooklyn An Audio Walking Tour by Shannon Geis is a thesis submitted to the faculty of Columbia University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in Oral History.

The text of her work can be found here (pdf) and in the link below.